Jelly Lord’, ‘Milenburg Joys’ and ‘London Blues’), along with some solo piano pieces (‘Wolverine Blues’, ‘New Orleans Joys’, ‘Grandpa’s Spells’, ‘The Pearls’ and ‘King Porter Stomp’), for Gennett Records. In July, he cut sides with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings (‘Sobbin’ Blues’, ‘Mr. By May of 1923 he was back in Chicago and in June made his first recordings – ‘Big Fat Ham’ and ‘Muddy Water Blues’ – for the Paramount label. Morton travelled to California during the summer of 1917 and remained there throughout 1922, working his way up and down the West Coast from Tijuana to Vancouver with pick-up bands. Morton settled in Chicago in 1914 and remained in this new centre of hot jazz until 1917, during which time he composed and published his earliest numbers, including ‘Jelly Roll Blues’, ‘New Orleans Blues’ and ‘Winin’ Boy Blues’.
By 1911 his travels had brought him up to New York, and the following year he made trips through Texas and the Midwest. He was among the earliest piano players in the bordellos of the Storyville district, where he mixed elements of ragtime, minstrel and marching-band music, foxtrots and French quadrilles, opera and salon music along with Latin American-influenced rhythms, which he called ‘the Spanish tinge’.īy 1907, after re-christening himself ‘ Jelly Roll Morton’, he began to travel the black vaudeville circuit around the Gulf Coast. Jelly Rollīorn on 20 October 1890, Ferdinand Joseph Lamothe was a Creole of mixed French and African ancestry. He was one of the first jazz musicians to strike a perfect balance between composition and collective improvisation, bridging the gap between ragtime and jazz. Ridiculed as a braggart, pimp, card shark and pool hustler, the audacious, self-proclaimed inventor of jazz Jelly Roll Morton was also hailed as a pioneering composer, gifted arranger, dazzling pianist and the greatest entertainer that New Orleans ever produced.